


Bryce and Justin Save a Manatee

by SegaBarrett



Category: 13 Reasons Why (TV)
Genre: Crack, Gen, Kidnapping, Manatees, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-19
Updated: 2021-02-19
Packaged: 2021-03-15 12:02:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,370
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29558817
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SegaBarrett/pseuds/SegaBarrett
Summary: Bryce and Justin have an eventful trip to the aquarium.
Comments: 2





	Bryce and Justin Save a Manatee

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: This story was inspired by this class story that we wrote back when I was in elementary school, if that defends me at all. Also, I have no idea if a manatee could survive in a river for any length of time, so please don't try this at home... if you're a manatee.

“Miss Mary Mac, Mac, Mac, all dressed in black, black, black…”

Kat, Chloe and some of the other girls were singing in the back of the bus, but Bryce and Justin were beyond not interested. It was about halfway through the third grade, and they were newly in best-friend status, with all of the excitement that that entailed.

They sat in the middle of the bus, Justin’s face pressed against the glass as the bus roared towards the aquarium. Justin had never been this far from Evergreen before, but Bryce was already bored. He had been in France over spring break, and the roads had looked like these roads. Roads, trucks, booooooring.

“I can stick a quarter up my nose,” Monty declared from the seat in front of them.

“Dare you,” Bryce retorted.

“Monty!” the teacher called back, “Do not stick a quarter up your nose.”

“Mr. Williams!” Chloe complained, “Monty is looking at me!”

“That’s because he likes you,” the teacher said without turning around.

“Yeah well, I don’t like him,” Chloe said. Kat giggled.

Monty threw a pencil at the other side of the bus, which was aimed at Chloe but hit Tyler, who yelled.

“Leave Tyler alone,” Bryce commanded.

Monty pulled a face, but he listened.

“Boys are so stupid,” Chloe declared, looking back at Kat and bursting into giggles along with her.

“All right,” said the long-suffering Mr. Williams, “In just a few very minutes we will have arrived at the Evergreen Aquarium. I don’t want to see any bad behavior from a single one of you.”

“I see London, I see France, I see Tyler’s underpants,” Monty declared. 

Tyler turned around, worried, and Clay leaned in towards him, probably to assure Tyler that Monty could not.

Mr. Williams sighed. 

“You need to be on your best behavior,” he repeated. “Now, we are going to break up into small groups with one chaperone each. I want to see Bryce, Justin, Tyler, Monty, and… Sheri all in one group.”

Sheri pulled a face.

“Why do I need to be with all those stupid boys?”

The teacher sighed.

“Someone has to,” he replied, “Someone has to.”

***

“Is that Flash?” Justin asked the chaperone, who was Sheri’s mother, “Is that Flash?”

“Who’s Flash?” Mrs. Holland inquired.

“Flash is the manatee we adopted,” Tyler replied, sticking a finger up his nose.

“Ewww,” Sheri exclaimed, “Tyler. That’s gross.”

Monty proceeded to shove Tyler against the glass of the manatee case.

“Come on, you two,” Mrs. Holland declared. “Stop fighting.”

Monty grumbled and sat down in front of the case.

“I need to go to the bathroom,” Justin declared.

“Can you wait a few minutes?” Mrs. Holland asked.

“No,” he replied, and Bryce giggled.

“I can go with him, Mrs. Sheri’s mom. I go to the aquarium all the time.”

“Nobody cares, Bryce!” Sheri declared. “All you ever talk about is you did this, you did that. You’re just a big fat dummy.”

“Sheri, don’t call people fat. It’s not nice,” Mrs. Holland chastised.

While they were talking, Bryce looked at Justin and gestured in the direction of the bathroom. Justin followed along after him.

Bryce would point out later that he really, really did know the way to the bathroom because he had been to the aquarium like, a million times with Marissa, who would take him there every time his parents were too busy – which was all of the time.

So he was really, really very sure of where he was going, up until he pushed through a door and found that he and Justin had ended up in what looked to be some sort of a storage closet.

“Uh, Justin?” Bryce called behind him.

“I’m here,” Justin replied. “But, um, where are we?”

Bryce nibbled on his cheek for a moment before looking around. There were a few mops around and some boxes, but no bathroom and no fish either. 

“I think we took a wrong turn,” Justin said.

“Nah, I think we just took a shortcut,” Bryce replied. He had to be close to the bathrooms. “Let’s keep going down this way, and, uh,” he started to walk through the room, finding that the place was splattered in some kind of yellow paint.

“I don’t think this is the way, Bryce,” Justin said again.

“Have I ever led you wrong yet?” Bryce replied, sticking his chest out. He had to look confident, even if he wasn’t sure that he felt it anymore. His father always told him never to let anyone see vulnerability, because if people saw it, they would stomp on it. He still didn’t entirely know what his dad meant by that, but he didn’t ever want him to look down at Bryce and tell him that he was just weak, so… He would have to figure it out.

He turned, his hands sliding into his pockets, before starting off in another direction.

That was when they heard it.

“Come on, Jenkins,” said a man’s voice, “I don’t have all day. We need to hoist the manatee and we need to get out of here before the security gets wind of us being here.”

“Why would they look for us here? You worry too much, man. We’re going to be in and out, just like that.”

Bryce shot a look at Justin and they both immediately crouched down, where they could hear the men but not see them… and hopefully could not be seen by them, either.

“Bryce,” Justin hissed, and Bryce put a hand over his mouth and a finger to his lips.

“We’ve got the crank. We’re going to be able to drag him right into this container and we’re flying off into the sunset.”

“You know that thing weighs like a ton, right? Are you sure our chains are going to be able to hold it? And are you sure our buyer is going to pay us for all this?”

“That’s what he said. Three million dollars. Man always wanted a pet manatee apparently.”

Bryce’s eyes went wide. That was the kind of money that his dad was always talking about over the phone, a million this and a million that, and Bryce knew it was a lot of money because his dad would always yell it a little bit, add that exclamation point right afterwards.

He started to walk his feet around the corner while the rest of his body stayed up against the wall. These men were bad men and he needed to figure out what to do; if they saw him and Justin then, well, there would be trouble all right.

He grabbed Justin’s hand and pulled him as hard as he could along with him, and that was when he heard the shout, “Hey! There’s two kids there!”

Bryce bit his lip, refused to let out a shout, but Justin squeaked beside him.

“Get back over here,” one of the men said, a tall and broad-shouldered guy with black hair. “And we won’t have to hurt you.”

Bryce decided that he could run, he would need to run, but he was unsure whether Justin would go with him and decided not to chance it. He turned and looked them over – beside the black-haired guy, there was a man with short, cropped red hair and a scar across his face.

“We didn’t hear anything!” Justin exclaimed, “We weren’t even doing anything, just let us go, please.” Justin’s eyes filled with abject terror that set Bryce aback. 

“Justin, it’s okay,” Bryce said. He looked over at the men and his mind cycled through every movie he had ever seen. For one, if they could get their hands on some booby traps, they could Kevin McAllister this thing, but in the meantime. “They’re not going to hurt us.” One of the men stepped forward and grabbed Bryce around the collar, and the other grabbed Justin, who yelped. 

“You sure about that?” the man with the scar asked.

Bryce swallowed and looked at the men.

“I know that you won’t. Because,” Bryce hesitated, remembering how Marissa had let him watch Along Came a Spider the other day on TV and how the kidnappers had found one child to be disposable as long as they had the rich one, “Because our father is Barry Walker. And he’s rich. So if you want to get some money for us, we’d better be alive and in one piece. Isn’t that right, Justin?”

Justin warily nodded.

“Then get in the car,” the man with the scar said, “And then we’re going to bring the manatee with us.”

When the other man, the one with the black hair, ushered Bryce and Justin to the car, the two finally had a chance to talk.

“Why did you tell them I was rich too, Bryce? You know my family isn’t going to pay any kind of ransom!” Justin exclaimed. “I’m doomed! Why did I let you talk me into any of this, Bryce?”

“Just relax, Justin. I have a plan to get us, and Flash, all out of here safely. But you need to relax.”

Bryce plopped back down on his hands and looked at the locks on the car, examining them silently. He tried to remember what he had seen on America’s Most Wanted, which Marissa let him watch but his mother would always yell about – “those depressing things, Bryce doesn’t need to see any of that, Marissa. Stop being so morbid.”

He heard the sound of the men attaching something to the back of the car and turned his head ever so slightly, it was some kind of a huge trailer.

“Do you think they really stole Flash?” Justin whispered.

“I think so.”

“Who buys a manatee?”

“Rich people will buy anything,” Bryce said, “Whether it’s bad to do it or not.”

Justin blinked,

“Well, we need to save Flash too. We can’t let him go to somebody who doesn’t know how to take care of him. Manatees have to be really difficult to take care of. I don’t even know what they eat, or anything.”

“Fish, I guess,” Bryce mused.

“I think I have some fish sticks in my pocket.”

Bryce looked at him.

“Why do you have fish sticks in your pocket, Justin?”

“In case I got hungry.”

Bryce sighed.

“But your parents are going to come to get us, right?” Justin prompted. “I mean, they’re not going to let you stay kidnapped.”

“I wouldn’t count on it,” Bryce mumbled, “Remember last week when my dad brought you to Take Your Child to Work Day because he thought you were me? I think we need to come up with our own escape.”

“And Flash too?” Justin said hopefully.

Bryce reached out and squeezed Justin’s hand with a sigh.

“And Flash too. We’ll figure something out.”

***

When the men got back in the car, they attached a trailer and then they began to drive, instructing Bryce and Justin to “shut their traps”.

Bryce wondered if he could get back behind the tail-lights and make them flash, like he had seen on America’s Most Wanted.

Bryce was beginning tor realize that he had spent more time than he maybe should have watching episodes of America’s Most Wanted.

He leaned in and pressed his lips almost against Justin’s ears.

“We need to get into that trailer where Flash is,” he whispered.

“But how do we do that?” Justin whispered back.

Bryce slowly unbuckled his seatbelt.

“Grab on to my ankle and don’t let go. You need to make sure you follow me.”

With that, Bryce hoisted himself as quickly as he could over the back seat with Justin right behind him, landing with a thud in the area right by the trunk. He reached out, hoping he had remembered the right episode correctly, and began to wiggle his hand, propping the back open. 

“Oh my God, Bryce,” Justin whispered, “We’re going to…”

But Bryce wasn’t waiting for Justin to say “die”, because he was already positioning himself to jump from the back of the car to the trailer.

He slipped his head through the metal bars of the cage that held Flash the manatee. He slipped forward and fell directly into the water, waving his arms around and letting out a yell, swimming as quick as he could, trying to keep afloat.

“Help!” he yelled, and Justin jumped in after him, grabbing at his hand from where he was perched up on the edge of the cage.

“I can’t swim either!” Justin yelled back, “But I’m going to try and pull you out!”

Justin leaned forward again, but his hand only brushed against Bryce’s before it slipped away again.

Bryce tried, again, to kick to the surface.

And then he felt it, a presence – a floor, but not quite, because floors weren’t thick and slimy and wet, came up behind him. 

“Flash?” Bryce asked, as if he expected the manatee to answer him. He didn’t get a response, of course, but the creature brought him to the surface and then turned in the direction of the long side of the cage.

In the direction of the river that ran alongside the road. Bryce recognized where they were, now – they were down by the pier.

Bryce heard Justin moving his hands around, but he couldn’t quite make it out.

A second later, Justin was next to him, sitting on top of the manatee just the same as he was. 

“I disconnected the trailer!” he exclaimed. “I, um, I hope this works.”

“What works?” Bryce asked, and then hung on to the manatee underneath as the trailer careened off, in the direction of the pier.

Spinning and unable to break, Bryce clung as the trailer went over the edge and landed in the water.

The manatee broke through the cage and began to swim through the river.

“Oh my God,” Justin said. “What do we do now?”

Bryce clung to the side of the beautiful beast.

“I guess Flash is going to take us home…” he said. He patted the side of the manatee and said, “Good job, Flash.”

And as they looked out at the wide, blue river, they considered that maybe they had done a very good job, too.


End file.
